Cancel the 2020 Tokyo Olympics

The 2020 Olympics will go on as scheduled, despite everything we know about the coronavirus suggesting it should be canceled.

Last week, sports stopped. The NBA and NHL suspended their seasons. MLB suspended spring training and delayed opening day. The NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, better known as March Madness, were completely canceled. The NFL didn’t yet have an active season to address — though free agency would and has carried on, bringing some normalcy back to sports fans’ lives. Followed by city shutdowns and public-space restrictions over the weekend, the stop in play will for many will be remembered as the moment the novel coronavirus pandemic felt real.

Amidst all the warranted careful consideration and cautious action, though, it was easy to miss the cancellation that did not happen. An event that will, a March 17 press release confirmed, go on as planned: The conspicuously ill-advised 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

The 2020 Summer Olympics are scheduled to take place in July and August in Tokyo, Japan and it is this four-month window the International Olympics Committee — commonly known as the IOC — cites as justification for keeping the event on the calendar.

“The IOC remains fully committed to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, and with more than four months to go before the Games, there is no need for any drastic decisions at this stage,” the IOC statement goes. “Any speculation at this moment would be counterproductive.”

The press release goes on to outline the measures the IOC is taking and its commitment to monitoring the situation day-to-day, but the fact remains the games are scheduled to go on.

Never mind that most experts and researchers believe we will need to practice social distancing for six months to a year, if not longer, to prevent as many as deaths as possible.

Never mind that there is little indication that the U.S., a country that sent 555 athletes to Rio in 2016, will succeed in achieving the months-long timeline for a moderate outbreak.

Never mind that the Olympics will bring together athletes from over 200 countries, almost all with different responses to the pandemic, health protocols and peak timelines.

Never mind that the pandemic is already fundamentally affecting athletes’ ability to train for the Olympics.

The Olympics have been canceled thrice before, twice for World War II and once for World War I. Delaying or canceling the 2020 Summer Olympics for pandemic reasons would be unprecedented, but then as the IOC itself acknowledges this whole situation is unprecedented.

It’s true that the Olympics represent a rare opportunity for the world to come together, it’s a strange and special time when it feels like truly everyone tunes into watch and celebrate even the most obscure of sports. But it’s not a reason to risk lives or prolong a pandemic. It’s only sports.

For more information about COVID-19, visit the CDC’s website or the website for your state’s Department of Health.